Nowadays I find a lot of games feel like too much work and/or anxiety when I just want to relax for like, 30 minutes to an hour after a long day. On the other hand, the games specifically designed to help you unwind just feel boring imo.
In the past I’ve felt like Outer Wilds scratched this itch, cause the whole experience was engaging but generally relaxed. There was a mystery that kept me hooked and the exploration and movement was fun in and of itself. I also felt like Subnautica filled this role since it was very much at my own pace, with anxiety producing portions which could for the most part be avoided or minimized, and also there was a clear objective to fulfill, get off the planet.
So what games do you play when you just wanna relax?
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Don’t overthink it. Minecraft. Vanilla survival world. Don’t try to optimize and automate everything (unless you find that relaxing). Make your farm look like a farm. Mine until until your inventory is full. Build towards an Ender Dragon or Wither fight if you have time. Go mining or fishing or do base chores or a beautification project if you don’t.
I tried Minecraft way back, so maybe it’s changed, but I don’t do to well in setting my own goals in a game. I liked Subnautica because there was an interesting story element and mystery that kept you engaged as you moved towards your goal of getting off planet. In the process of reaching the goal, yeah, I wanna make my base look nice, wanna build some cool things, but my overall actions were still being compelled by the storytelling and world-building of the game. I don’t see those elements in Minecraft but again, it’s been a long time since I played.
You sound like me. I don’t do well with sandbox games, I like a story related objective to work towards. Subnautica and Outre Wilds are also both favorites of mine. I also think a great chill game is Forza Horizon 4 or 5. Driving around the open world with changing time of day and popping into different events is so relaxing to me, especially if I mute the in-game radio and play some Spotify instead. My only regret is I bought it through the Microsoft Xbox app (to keep my progress I made during a Game Pass free trial) and now I can’t play it on my Steam Deck.
The two big boss fights are the closest thing to a “goal,” but yeah, even in survival mode I guess it’s as much lego as it is video game. In your case, maybe a Bethesda game but focusing on side and companion quests until you’re so overpowered that wrapping up the main plot will feel like one more.
Automation is really fun with mods. They are kind of like puzzles and I chill out thinking about them.
In the right mood, I like setting things up and tweaking them, but I don’t find it “chill”. If I fire up Minecraft to chill, I usually think of it almost like a model railroad or something, occasionally it literally is a virtual model railroad if I want to build nether transit or something. I also find it satisfying to fill in that last patch of a map and put a copy of it on a wall next to its mates. It is very satisfying to get that auto smelter or adjustable enchanting room just right, though, and I can easily see that stuff being a goal in its own right.
What I find brilliant about the concept of Minecraft is the way it hits a sweet spot of being just complex enough to be immersive, but abstract and simplified enough that the open world is actually open and rewards a hundred different play styles.
I used to love doing a weird automated laboratory under my classic farm, but yeah it did suck out the fun once I could reliably do it again and again.
I used to specifically farm the ingredients for pumpkin pie, this was just after hoppers and repeaters were added which meant you could use those and pistons to make an automatic egg collector, sugare cane breaker and pumpkin breaker. I’d build the most picturesque farm with a secret trapdoor somewhere that would lead to my food automation zone. I haven’t really played properly since 2017 though, with a brief comeback in 2020.
You should check out Stardew Valley. Super chill game that evolves at your own pace.
Don’t like to fish on the game? Don’t fish.
Don’t like to go in the mines and fight stuff? Don’t go in the caves.
Play on a PC and want to spend hours just modding the hell out of the game? Go for it.
I couldn’t get into it. Felt very stressful to me. Like I had to do something productive every day before night. It’s probably more my fault than the game’s fault though.
I get like this in any sort of “real time passes” games, with some exceptions. If you have a limited amount of time to do a limited amount of things in game, my mind starts min/maxing what I should be doing every moment in game. In Outer Wilds the passage of time matters less cause you always start back at zero, what you gain each run is just knowledge, you don’t lose out and fall behind on any resources, points or whatever cause you didn’t do certain things that day.
Stardew valley is way too stressful to me, I have to make the most of each day and if I’m not I’m wasting it
Personally, i just need a game that lets me do something pretty. Satisfactory was mentioned, or City Skylines. Or something that is highly nostalgic and familiar, like Skyrim, Halo or Minecraft. I don’t intrinsically need to think in these cases, which is my goal. I’m a programmer, so anything that lets me shut my brain off and just exist is great. Sometimes BloonsTD is also a great game for this, but it’s situational.
Counter intuitively, most “casual” games like Stardew don’t really fit this vibe for me because of the daily time limit. I need to pick and choose what tasks to do in a day, and I always fall into a min-max schedule, which requires effort. Much as I love them, I also avoid story driven games like Baldur’s Gate when I need to unwind, because I really need to pay attention to progress, and there kinda isn’t any mindless grinding. Multiplayer games with randos is also strictly out. No League, COD, Battlefield, Fortnite etc… Just in general. Don’t like 'em, never did, hate that they are so prolific. They’re just stressful.
Man, sounds like we’re in very much the same vibe, think I’ll give City Skylines and/or Satisfactory a go
Hell yea my dude. Don’t forget, always be productive! And don’t damage Ficsit property.
The factory must grow!
In the something pretty department I recommend dwarffortress.
Burnout Paradise
There are few games where winning and losing are equally fun, but Burnout Paradise pulls it off flawlessly.
You hit that turn with the perfect drift? Hell yeah. Oh shit, there was a car waiting for you at that intersection and now you have to watch your car and their car get smashed, crumpled, and tossed like a bag of moldy tangerines in slow motion? Hell yeah.
+1 Burnout Paradise is such a great game for just mindlessly driving around. I think I have that entire map memorized in my brain now.
Your description alone is getting this put on my Steam wishlist
I got this game a week or 2 after it came out in 2008. There’s literally a whole open city to explore but I remember the first 30-45 minutes I played were spent literally driving up and down the same quarter mile road because I found a split ramp built for barrel rolls but I just wanted to see all the ways I could squish the top of my car with a failed barrel roll and still drive away lol.
15.5 years later it’s still just as satisfying
RimWorld. It’s so fun watching your colonists at work, peacefully farming, and suddenly one of them gets hit by a chunk of steel followed by a hundred bear raid.
Very relaxing.
You can also play in builder mode where there are no raids (or very little challenge to them i cant remember exactly)
FTL, Stardew valley, No mans sky, Minecraft, Old rpgs like Chrono Trigger
I don’t exactly experience a tonne of chill while playing FTL
FTL is a great chill out game for me. The only problem is I’ve put in so many hours that I’ve practically seen everything! I looked into some interesting mods but just haven’t tried them out yet. When I think about it, FTL shouldn’t be that chill, but there’s a certain simplicity in the gameplay, and the ability to pause all the time, even during combat, gives me the ability to take my time thinking through what I’m gonna do.
Underrated chill out game, agreed, maybe I’ll finally get around to trying some mods.
Yeah I haven’t tried the mods either and I kinda suck at the game but I’ve always felt like it has a low cost to entry, which is why it feels chill to me. A lot of death anxiety in games is due to time investment and, frankly, like BOTW, fear of long loading screens more than any in game punishment.
Ftl has such a satisfying and similar gameplay loop and allows so much pausing that it doesn’t really feel stressful for me. I still hate dying and do it a lot in the game, but I can play ftl with a sort of soft mental focus that many other games don’t allow me to do
No Man’s Sky.
After the mildly stressful intro (which isn’t bad, just uses more sticks than carrots in the tutorial section), you basically just pick a direction and go.
If you wanna quest, there are quests available in (almost) every system.
If you wanna farm, pick a nice planet and get to building.
If you wanna fight, go find a planet with hostile Sentinel presence.
There’s always something interesting to do, but you can also just find a nice view on some planet, build a couch and just watch the iridescent grass blow in the wind for a bit.
The more I hear about No Man’s Sky now the more I’m thinking that perhaps this will be one of the games I can chill out to. I generally love space games, and the idea of just kinda flying around doing random stuff is already appealing.
Its a vastly game than it was at launch. It’s on my list to play.
As someone with almost 500h in NMS, get in fully aware that things get repetitive fast. Once you get off planet and can visit other stars the first time, it’ll likely take 2 hours to see all different kinds of planets.
Unlocking (“learning”) the 3 aliens’ languages is the absolute worst slog in the whole game.
Another ultra tedious chore is doing the daily missions for Quicksilver (special currency) to unlock some nifty cosmetics.
Also, combat sucks. It just plain sucks. The most annoying thing to me is: if you don’t fire your weapon for 1 or 2 seconds, your dude will put it down, which will create a small time window where you’ll have a significant delay between pressing the fire button and actually firing, because of the animation.
No Man’s Sky has a very chill vibe. I don’t play it super often, but it’s probably the chillest game I play semi-regularly.
And by its very nature, it’s forgiving of long absences. It’s so easy to just pick it back up, probably take some time to admire the 10 new updates Hello Games has released since you last played, and then settle in for some chill gameplay.
I’ll never finish No Man’s Sky, and I wouldn’t even say I play it, exactly. But it’s one of my very favorite places to visit, and I will probably continue to visit for years and years to come.
This type of forgiving design is the main difference between modern games and older ones. Nowadays, there’s no shortage of games that are trying to manipulate you into grinding every day.
For me it’s Red Dead 2. All that horseback riding and camping and herb picking and Pinkerton killing? It’s like I’m the one camping and horseback riding and killing pinkertons.
Dorfromantik
I can’t suggest this game enough.
This is my favorite chill game.
It’s my bike, I ride my bike.
Indoors, I’ve got Zwift, which looks a bit like a game.
Outdoors the resolution is better, but the NPCs can be belligerent.
Lol
Factorio, Minecraft, and… Counter Strike. I exclusively play with a full squad of friends and even if we have a bad game, at least I’m spending time with my friends. Keeping contact with your friends is super important and getting harder every year. So it’s quality time.
I have a few.
Zelda on the switch. (BotW and TotK)
Terraria and Stardew Valley are pretty fun to play for relaxing.
Valheim with console options enabled so I have unlimited resources and can kill any enemies if I’m feeling lazy. I mostly like to just build and I’m slowly building an entire island with buildings, and other features.
Warframe, it’s my “no thought, head empty, just shoot things” game
As a veteran of the game I keep coming back to it from time to time it’s a really nice way to relax.
What MR are you?
I stopped at L1, I play on and off nowadays.
Damn, how many hours didit take you to reach LR1?
Well I’ve been playing since closed beta so like 10y and something at this point, but you can definitely go over my MR fairly easily, MR is about collecting things not really skill related, of course there’s still some time invested.
Damn, I’ve been playing semi-consistently since 2021 and just cannot bring myself to rank MR above 16 lol
Easiest way would be to go to your codex, select a category, melee for example and make and level up every single weapon there, sentinels, warframes you get the idea, anything you can level up gives mastery, even completing the star chart by unlocking every mission, somethings will be harder or expensive to get or behind multiple days of farm aka most of stuff in open world but that’s how everyone does it.
Rim world on low difficulty
Low difficulty rimworld is underrated. Animal crossing with cannibalism.
Hmm you make a great pitch
It’s a great time. Highly recommended.
Can’t say I expected to see rimworld up here
I got deeply into this (genre?) when I burned out on a combination of playing big/tough games and the stresses of life. I also enjoyed the pace of Outer Wilds and Subnautica. Some other favourites:
- Supraland 1/2 (low combat, light hearted metroidvania, I loved it)
- Psychonauts 2 (amazing adventure game, big but not hard. I loved collecting everything, it was a great balance)
- Tinykin (similar adventure, a bit like Pikmin, which is also great. Lots of chilled collecting)
- Spiritfarer (lots of freedom, loose plot, not overwhelming)
- Breath of the Wild (do what you want, very nice discovery elements)
- TOEM, A Short Hike, GRIS and Cocoon (light adventure / puzzle games, peaceful but could be boring if you want action)
- Yokus Island Express (lovely metroidvania, chilled gameplay, not overwhelming)
- It Takes two (humour, light combat - played with my young son)
- Unravel 1/2 (easy-ish puzzles)
- Weirdly, I found Sniper Elite 4/5 fairly chill, lots of scoping out areas
- Overcooked 2 (zero stress if you play practice mode a ton before attempting a level. I found it a very zen/flow game)
- Peggle 1/2 (can be frustrating, but is very low stakes and arcadey. Lovely for short sessions)
- Wilmots Warehouse (can be stressful if you take the timer seriously, but I loved all the organising. Very satisfying)
- Vampire Survivors (can get a bit much, but pretty simple and disposable)
There are tons more, I deal with a lot of anxiety!
Some games I was recommended for this purpose that didn’t land for me:
- Powerwash sim / other simulators (these feel like a second job for me. Constant grind and focus on perfection wasn’t helpful)
- Tetris Evolution / Lumines (either gets too fast / hard, or gets boring)
- Stardew / Terraria (in theory these look great, but I find huge sandboxes too overwhelming. Always feels like I should be doing more stuff / doing it better)
- Roguelikes (I like Hades, Dead Cells, etc, but they’re very stressful and frustrating when so much hinges on survival)
Finally, I’d suggest trying a solo board game. More tactile and relaxing alternative to screen time.
I saw you mention peggle and rouge lites. If you haven’t checked it out yet you should try peglin - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1296610/Peglin/.
Its a great peggle based rouge lite with a good amount of replay ability (plus there is an excellent android app too).
Might I recommend Alba and Lil’ Gator Game? Both will fit fairly well into your list.
